Читать книгу A Self-Made Thief - Footner Hulbert - Страница 9

Table of Contents

AT the end of two weeks, in the offices of Palliser, Beardmore, Beynon & Riggs, Heberdon told himself bitterly that his lot was no better than that of a hard-driven cab-horse. All the dirty work of the firm fell to his share, it seemed; the endless, tiresome searching of records, the preparation of perfunctory documents, the interviewing of unimportant people, the attendance at insignificant, long-winded trials. Every person in the establishment took his tone toward Heberdon from the head, and Judge Palliser had let it be known from the first that his nephew was to receive no special consideration. It was useless to kick; Heberdon had delivered himself into bondage, and well he knew it. Behind the old judge's bluff joviality there was a certain remorselessness.

Outside the office things were worse, if possible. His engagement to Miss Ida Palliser had been formally announced, and congratulations were in order. Congratulations rang a hollow knell inside Heberdon; congratulations riveted his chains. His fiancée's pinched nose blinded him to her very solid virtues.

The Pallisers were established up at Marchmont for the summer, and nearly every night Heberdon was dragged around to other houses in the neighbourhood, or to entertainments at the country club, there to be shown off as by a condescending proprietor. Having waited so long for her engagement, the eldest Miss Palliser was not going to be denied any of the perquisites appertaining thereto. Useless for the victim to try to assert himself; she was of a strong character, and her father backed her up.

The whole numerous Heberdon-Palliser connection was pleasantly stirred by the betrothal, and there were numerous purely family parties in honour of the pair. These were the most trying of all. Heberdon secretly detested his relations, for least of all in the world did they appreciate him. They were always bringing up incidents of his childhood that made him feel foolish.

There was Aunt Florence, otherwise Mrs. Pembroke Conard, a very great lady in her own estimation, who expected you figuratively to crawl on the carpet, and you had to do it, Ida said, in order not to compromise the handsome wedding present that was to be expected from that quarter. The same with Grand-Aunt Maria Heberdon, who was childish and slightly palsied, but whose will—that is to say, her testamentary will—was never to be lost sight of for a moment. Then there was Uncle Maltbie Heberdon, the Dean of Kingston, a solemn bore, only a professor to be sure, but the whole family kow-towed to him because he was assumed to give it literary tone.

The younger generation consisted principally of smart young married couples who endeavoured to conceal their desperate struggles with the high cost of living behind a humorous frankness on the subject. Their only hope of salvation lay in their "expectations" from Aunt Maria et al. How sick Heberdon was of hearing about their babies and their servants! They had as few as possible of the former and as many as possible of the latter. The youngest of these couples took it upon themselves to patronise the engaged pair as a foolish young couple who would learn better. Ida, who had hitherto been considered almost elderly, enjoyed this, but Heberdon writhed.

Ida was above all businesslike. "What is the gross income from your apartment house, Frank?" she asked one day.

"I don't know," he said sulkily; "about six thousand, I guess."

"Why, Frank! There are nine apartments in the building, and there isn't one of them that rents for less than nine hundred and sixty dollars. And you told me yourself they were always full."

"Well, there's taxes and repairs and wages and coal, isn't there?"

"I said gross."

"Well, I know I never get more than four thousand dollars out of it."

"If you own up to four thousand, I can safely assume five," she said shrewdly. "And when we're married you'll get a thousand more for your flat. Then there's your two thousand salary."

"I can't stand that long," muttered Heberdon.

"Oh, I expect papa is just testing you out. I'll make him give me two thousand dollars for myself. That's ten thousand. None of the married girls have more than that except Jessie Crittendon, and she had to take a man fifty years old. I'll make mine go farther than any of them. We'll take a small, perfectly appointed apartment on Park Avenue. We won't have any children, of course. We'll cultivate Aunt Florence's set. They're older than we are, of course, but they'll die off sooner and that will leave me in a position to take the lead."

"Dull as ditch-water," muttered the exasperated Heberdon.

"What of it?" said Ida virtuously. "We're not in this world just for the purposes of amusement, I hope. Of course Aunt Florence is old-fashioned. The very smartest thing is to be a little old-fashioned. That's something that these new people can't imitate. And, after all, her lot are the best people. Nobody enjoys such prestige. That's the main thing."

So much for Ida's style. Left to himself Heberdon would no doubt have developed along similar lines, but he did not relish being dragged.

On the rare occasions when Heberdon was allowed to escape to his club, he found less satisfaction there than of yore. Never since that ride in the taxi-cab had his three friends referred in any way to the unfortunate wager. The memorandum and the cheques had been destroyed presumably; at least the cheque Heberdon had given them had never been presented for payment. He was willing, or had been willing, to pay it, but' did not feel called upon to remind them of the fact.

Spurway, Hanwell, and Nedham now drew their skirts, as it were, on Heberdon's approach. They had taken in another man permanently for a fourth at bridge. Heberdon might have been considered to have a perfectly just cause for resentment in this holier-than-thou attitude, but it was not that that made him hot under the collar. Every time he saw his erstwhile friends he was reminded of Spurway's contemptuous remark, "Clumsy bungler!" Heberdon could not forget that. It had made a rankling wound in his vanity.

"Was it my fault that the damned taxi-cab burst a tyre?" he passionately asked himself. "By gad, I'd like to show them!"

The intense disagreeableness of his present situation had the natural effect of causing Heberdon to turn to the past. The effect of the fright he had received gradually wore off. The Princesboro robbery had been forgotten under the press of newer sensations, and there was no chance of its being brought up now. Heberdon forgot the sensation of being hunted, and of having a hand twisted in your collar; forgot his ghastly fright under the pier; but on the other hand, in imagination he often returned to that thrilling moment when he poked a gun at the paralysed paying-teller, and the great, fat packages of greenbacks began to plop into the opened satchel like ripe fruit.

"Ah, that was living!" he sighed. "If only it hadn't been for that tyre!"

He took up the study of crime again, feeling more than ever like an expert now. A new book of the psychology of criminals came out, which he had to have, of course. After reading it he wrote, anonymously, a long letter to the author, putting him right on several points.

More and more as a refuge from the pinpricks of existence Heberdon began to seek solace in day dreams. Day-dreaming seems such an innocent pastime. You can imagine anything you like, and as long as you keep it on an imaginary plane whom does it hurt?

Every time he went into one of the several banks with which his firm did business, he involuntarily began to plan how it might be robbed; noted the armed guards, sized up the clerks and their dispositions, looked to the exits and informed himself as to the volume of business done at different hours. He robbed the Market National a dozen times over—in imagination. To be sure, there were practical difficulties in the way, but in his daydreams he always brilliantly surmounted these, and got away with an immense haul.

Under the Market National there were safe-deposit vaults he often had to visit, and this establishment stimulated his ingenuity even more than a bank. Because nobody had ever robbed a safe-deposit vault that he knew of; it would be an immense feather in the cap of the first cool hand who was able to pull it off. He thought about it endlessly, but the very simplicity of the arrangements offered insuperable difficulties.

At the foot of a stairway from the bank you were faced by an immense steel grill with bars two inches in diameter. In this grill was a gate with a most imposing array of locks and further guarded during business hours by a young man with perfect manners and an unwavering determined eye. He never left the gate. In his side-pocket Heberdon saw the slight bulge of a heavy little object of significant shape.

Beside the young man on a little shelf was a great ledger, in which was written the names, numbers, genealogy and passwords of the customers, but as a matter of fact, the young man knew most of the customers and but rarely had to consult his book.

Behind the great steel fence all the little safes were arranged in tier upon tier down both sides of a wide corridor. These were in charge of a snowy-haired old gentleman with, if possible, even more delightful manners than the other. He unlocked the outer door of your safe and handed you the tin box within. It would be child's play to overcome him, Heberdon thought, but what would be the use while the young man held the gate?

Having received your box you carried it through an archway into a room which opened up at the back. This room was lined all around with booths where the customers might open their boxes in privacy. A negro maid was in charge here; she opened the door of the booth for you and closed it behind you. Heberdon, unable to evolve a scheme for robbing the vault itself, coquetted with the idea of holding up one of the other customers. They nearly all carried little satchels. The maid often went out of the room. How simple to drop a customer with a blackjack, thrust his body into one of the booths, close the door on it, and, taking his satchel, calmly walk out. The difficulty was that the crime would instantly be brought home to Francis Heberdon, lawyer. Heberdon never did succeed in getting around that.

When Heberdon and Ida dined at a wealthy and fashionable house, while Heberdon was making sprightly table talk with the lady on this side or that, his under-mind would be busy appraising the hostess's jewels and the amount of plate displayed, counting the servants, noting all the household arrangements, the window-fasteners, the relation of the windows to the grounds outside, et cetera, et cetera. What a sensation would it have caused had his thoughts stalked forth into the light. Perhaps the thoughts of some of the other guests were queer, too, in their way.

There was a particular piquancy in planning the robbery of Aunt Florence's house, which, in its heavy style, was the most magnificent of all the houses that they visited. It was on the Hudson, where plutocrats used to live, in style a limestone castle of 1884. Unfortunately, Aunt Florence's jewels were so well known that she didn't have to wear them. Presumably they were well locked up in one of those confounded safe-deposit vaults. To be sure, there was plate by the hundredweight, but rather difficult to carry off. Anyway, Heberdon had the feeling that mere silver was beneath the notice of a really first-class crook.

One afternoon when he was waiting for an Elevated train over on the Flatwick line, a single-car stopped at the station, the money-car. Every day it travelled up and down the line at a certain hour collecting the receipts from each station, and on Saturday morning it came around with the pay envelopes.

From boyhood, Heberdon had been familiar with the sight of the money-car, but now, for the first time, it occurred to him what a sensation would be caused if it were robbed. He saw the headlines in his mind's eye, "A train robbery in New York City!" The car had never been robbed within his memory. It ought not to be too difficult, say, at one of the lonely stations in the suburbs. To be sure, it carried a strong crew—motorman, conductor, and three clerks—but long immunity surely must have made them careless; they might be taken by surprise—

When the car stopped, one of the clerks got off with his little satchel and disappeared within the ticket-office. Without appearing to take any special interest, Heberdon sauntered along the platform, glancing through the windows of the car. Within, it was arranged like a miniature bank, with a narrow passage running through on Heberdon's side, flanked by a wooden partition with a brass grill above. The grill was pierced with several little windows. Behind the grill the remaining clerks were working with their backs to Heberdon. The one who had got off returned to the car with his satchel, and the car moved on down the line.

Heberdon ruminated. "One would have to know the exact layout of the interior before he could do anything. When she comes back on the other track the interior will be open to the platform over there. Let me see, it will take her twenty minutes to run down to the ferry, and the same to come back. I'll just be on hand."

But forty minutes later, over on the other platform, a disappointment awaited him. The interior of the car had been ingeniously contrived with a view to avoid tempting the populace by a display of coin without at the same time suggesting that anything was hidden. The clerks were now facing Heberdon with the brass grill at their backs, but the back of the desk at which they worked had been built up, cutting off the lower part of the windows, and Heberdon could not see what they were doing with their hands.

"Well," thought Heberdon, "when they pay off, the men go inside to get their money. They're always advertising for men. I could go to work on a Friday and get paid off next day. It would only mean a day oft from the office. I'll ask for next Friday off."